During China’s War of Resistance against Japan, I was imprisoned by the Japanese for preaching the gospel in Northern China. While I was in prison, I prayed every day. The Japanese put me into a cell together with a Greek man. This man belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church, and we enjoyed our conversations very much. When he asked me why I had been imprisoned, I told him that I had been imprisoned for preaching Jesus. For this reason, he respected me very much and asked me to pray with him regularly. Twenty days later he was released, and I was left alone. On that day I knelt down to pray by myself. Once I knelt down, the eyes in heaven shone on me like a beam of light. Tears fell from my eyes, and a hymn welled up within me. As I began to sing, I felt that the Lord was right there with me. I was inwardly connected to the heavens, and I did not have any feeling of loneliness or suffering. At that time, even though I was in prison, I was full of praises and joy as though I were in the heavens.
This experience was not the result of someone exhorting or teaching me; rather, it was the result of God in heaven shining into me through His Spirit, His eyes, to motivate me with the light and energy of His fire. This is the source of a Christian’s living. A Christian does not live by outward imitation but by the shining of the Spirit of God into him. We can say that this shining is the eyes, the lamps, the fire, or the Spirit. In short, God is the Spirit, and He is also a consuming fire. When He comes to us, the first thing He does is to look at us with His eyes. When He sees us, He shines on us, when He shines on us, He burns us, and when He burns us, He motivates us within. This is spiritual reality, and this is the Christian living.
In the past there was a female preacher in China whose name was Dora Yu. When she was around twenty years old, she decided to study medicine in England. On the day that her ship was approaching Marseilles, the Spirit of God reached her and burned in her. She sensed a voice within her, saying, “Go back! Go back! Do not go to England to study medicine.” The year that this happened was toward the end of the Ching Dynasty. At that time, for a young lady who had been sent by her parents to England to study medicine to have such a feeling in the middle of her voyage was unthinkable. Nevertheless, she said to the captain, “I must land. I will not go to England.” Upon hearing this, the captain asked her, “What are you going to do when you go back to China?” She replied, “I have to go back to China to preach Jesus.” The ship had to continue its voyage, so they landed her in France, and from there she went back to China. When her family came to pick her up, they thought that she must have returned because she was ill. When they found that she was not sick, they scolded her. In response she told them, “There was a fire burning in me; the Holy Spirit was moving in me continually, urging me to preach the gospel.” No matter how much she explained, however, her parents still did not understand, and no matter how strongly her parents persuaded her, she could not be changed. Since her parents had no way to change her, they told her out of anger, “If Jesus wants you to preach Him, that is fine. We will go back home. You stay in Shanghai alone, and let Jesus take care of feeding you.”
After her parents left her, Dora Yu was alone by herself. As she was looking to God, He opened the way for her and prepared a flat for her on Broadway in Shanghai. It was there that she began to preach the gospel, and from that time on God greatly used her. Those who were in Shanghai in 1948 testified that following Dora Yu’s preaching every row of chairs in both the chapel and the hallway would be wet because of people’s tears. Many wept, repented, and were saved by her preaching. In those days few in China preached concerning regeneration. Dora Yu may have been the first one. Today in Christianity there are many great servants of God who were saved through her preaching.
When God works in man, He looks into man’s inner being. God’s eyes are His lamps of fire, and when these lamps of fire shine within a person, there is a burning within him. This burning is the moving of the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is God Himself, Christ Himself. The living, the path, and everything of a Christian come from this burning. They do not come from the teaching without but from this burning within. This is spiritual reality.